ON HOPE: Inanna's Revolution

Halkim Al Karim is a contemporary Iraqi artist known for his strategically blurred and altered photographs. Born in 1963 in Najaf, Iraq, he went on to study at the Baghdad Academy of Fine Arts and later the Gerrit Reitveld Academie in Amsterdam. Karim's work was featured in the Iraqi Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale. His work is in the collections of major museums including the Arab Museum of Contemporary Art in Doha, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the Saatchi Collection in London, Darat Al Funun in Amman, L’Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, Artron Art Museum in China and Yinchaun MoCA in China. He lives and works between Denver, CO and Dubai.

"ON HOPE: Inanna's Revolution" explores the fierce power of mythic beauty across time and culture — a force of sensual and spiritual nourishment that gives birth to hope. This is not gentle softness, but the electric vibrancy of untamed beauty that tears at our flesh, pierces our gaze, and stands in defiance of injustice with proud hands on hips. Through beauty, we feast on hope. Halim Al-Karim’s large-scale photography honors the Sumerian mythology of Inanna, who suffered in the depths of darkness, only to return to the fullness of her power with a glint of garnet in her eyes. His photography embraces the full material possibilities of the medium, with techniques spanning antiquated darkroom production to digital manipulation as he expands its boundaries.